Campervan designs and maps...where next.

Where will we go next and how might we get there?

In between trips around this part of Portugal have been obsessively drawing campervan ideas and and looking at maps. When you stand on a pristinely empty beach with your kids running out across the sand like deer, one thought takes hold,
"How can we do more of this in the future?"

I'm keen to explore my native Scotland and Wales (which has more castles per square mile than any other country in the world!) I've also always had a thing about North Devon. My daughter is desperate to spend time in Paris, we have passed through but not explored.

Looking at the French road map I never realized how well connected we are with France....

We need a Britstop book, to sleep free and legal in the UK, and Aires book for France, and a van, car turned into camper... Here following are my ideas.

Portugal: Ideas and Impressions.

Portugal: Impressions and ideas.

I'm sitting in the main street in Quarteira, in The Algarve, in Portugal. Is a little scruffy. A Christmas fair has been running on and off for a few days and they have put read carpet all down the street, which is now rather dirty! A busker is singing a mix of the usual busker hits, like, “American Pie” and something I assume is Portuguese, but it's a really hard language to pick up and I learned more Spanish, Italian and German in 24 hours than I have Portuguese in a month - sorry.

A few moments ago a man walked by with a bucket of half alive octopus. There are lots of bikes and scooters, cars are hard to afford here. Portugal is pretty poor and pretty sparsely populated. Lots of people don't have jobs, however many of them are not unemployed, they live off small plots of family owned land, growing most of their food and bartering a bit more. Even in the town lots of bits of verge or unused land has been adopted by householders and turned into stretches of vegetable garden.

There are many empty show and decaying buildings but also little friendly business almost always kept very clean, even if their stuff is a bit old and scuffed it is usually wiped, maintained and polished. It shows a short of self respect which is typical of the almost poverty of many here. They don't act down on their luck, they act happy, friendly, community minded - without much wealth. Up the street a young woman and a weathered old lady have been dancing to the busker while minding empty stalls, at the end of the song they embrace and go back to work, see what I mean?

There are also many empty apartment buildings - I saw this in Spain too. Row upon row of holiday flats empty nine months of the year. I may a man who owned one and worked in London, he moved to Portugal but before that had owned it ten years and spent one month total in it. I did last them on my bike, and passed the building sites throwing up more and think, can't we share them out somehow? I'm not socialist, I do think you should benefit from hard work but surely a system could be worked out to learn them out to displaced families or something? I don't know but it seems so sad that people are sleeping in the doorways of 100 empty little fully functional apartments!

The coast and the countryside, the history and the wildlife are wonderful here, feasting on being surrounded by so much differentness.

Love, Kirsteen

A Life Less Stationarity.

A Life Less Stationarity.

So yesterday was a huge landmark in all our lives, l taught my daughter to skip stones across the water so they bounce a few times before sinking! OK, it's ridiculous to call that a huge landmark, but then again is it? It's only eight years until she's an adult, how much we can miss of our children's lives of we let other people bring them up? And how much can they miss of their own lives if they spend six hours a day in a room with twenty-nine other kids writing stuff down for twelve years! I know many schools are very good and most teachers well-intentioned, but can we really call that a good education? What if they also spend their free time on screens? We are the generation replacing going and doing, with clicking and viewing. I'm not saying it's all bad, my daughter has become a fluent reader reading comics on YouTube in the absence of books in English! A wonderful future innovation! I guess I'm looking for balance. I'm trying to skip a stone across the surface of technology without sinking out of sight of the sunlight!

So there is also a narrative, we are travelling around Spain and Portugal in a campervan, to find adventure, experience, history, culture and a lot of sand! The last time I wrote in any detail we had made it to Santiago de Compostela and were staying in a hotel while broken down!

I'm now in a campsite in southern Portugal where we plan to sell the van and stay in a campsite but until spring. How did this happen? Well, we fixed the van in Santiago and set of South again in some of the worst weather we've seen in these parts, rain and flooding, rain on the roads coming from six directions! We got to Tui and stopped at the aire (free, camper only stop, which is basically a car park with a tap and a drain). The rain cleared and the kids and I took a walk.

Tui: I think Tui is my happy place! A perfect, tiny city, high on a hill with constant views of the wide blue river.

Porto: Porto is like London and Florence had a baby who got all the best features from both parents, add cable cars and trams too! It seems like a hundred thousand red roofs climb the hills from the river and no two the same shape!

Sao Mamede: We arrived in torrents of rain, everything was damp and our damp coats brought more wet into the van, keeping the door open was impossible, everyone huddled in the van on screens, everyone was freezing and board. I read it's a beautiful part of Portugal but the rain never let up and we left for more exhausting driving through minimal visibility. People we met were friendly and helpful, places were clean, if sometimes a bit scruffy from age, as I have found throughout Northern Spain and Portugal.

Fatima: Some point after Sao Mamede we broke down again, losing power on the long hills that characterize driving in Portugal (the big trucks frequently get down to 30 kilometres per hour!). A gentleman stopped to help us and ended up spending the whole day driving us around to garage and town, my son referred to him as a taxi! Fatima is odd, the whole town exists because some children had a vision of the Virgin Mary there. The pope has visited recently and the town is littered with statues of him, every shop sells statues of Mary and religious souvenirs, also wax body parts to bring the virgin as gifts if you require them healing! My daughter and I found wax hearts and intestinal tracts a bit macabre. If any of you would like me to bring you a wax spleen, say the word! There is no actual community there, just souvenir shops, hotels and churches!

All mankind has the right to celebrate their faith as they see fit, but personally, I felt real awe walking in the pilgrim's footsteps to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela and Fatima left me unmoved.

The garage at Fatima said my van needed a new engine and it would cost five thousand euros! The people at my breakdown cover were not convinced and we agreed to ship it South to a garage recommended by a Facebook friend!

Vilamoura: we took the train to Vilamoura and the van got a piggyback on a breakdown truck! The van was picked up on a Tuesday in Fatima but did not join us in southern Portugal until Friday! No one knows what she did while of on her own, if she turns out to be pregnant there is a waiting list for the little campervan! We took the train, which was less than a hundred euros for a family of four to travel first class halfway down the country! The train station cafe was a dead ringer for 1977!

Vilamoura is beautiful but the old town is so manicured and populated by English and Germans that it is indistinguishable from the hotels and golf course! Tourism gone mad, visit Portugal and miss the whole culture.

We went from staying in the four seasons, with four swimming pools and a spa (on the breakdown insurance) to sleeping in the broken van on the garage four-court in lashing rain by a busy road when the breakdown insurance ran out! Seldom has such contract been part of my experience! But the same Facebook friend came and took us ice-skating in a glittering mall!

Quartarteira: The new quote was for a fuel pump was a thousand euros, but after the previous breakdown and way too much eating out because the freezing wet van was no fun, we didn't have it.

We patched the van up and drove it to a campsite in Quartarteira. It's along the beach from Vilamoura and joined together, like Brighton and Hove if there was fourteen miles of sandy beach and spiders the size of fifty pence pieces and the colour of the sun!

The lady at the campsite explained it to me like this, “Up that end they lie in the sun beside their villas, this end we work!” she chuckled quite cheerfully about that, clearly a woman who understands that no happiness has ever been found by doing nothing!

We arrived at the campsite, after two months on the road in a basic van, two breakdowns and a month of rain, every scrap of clothing was dirty, everyone was dirty, we were down to a handful of euros and dead tired.

We washed out clothing and bedding, charged our devices and made a plan, sell the van and rent a hut with a shower and flushing loo! Here we will stay until spring, no longer meandering around the coast visiting every village and bay, but it's beautiful here and we will explore and learn.

I've figured out the smart way to have come here, flights from the UK are very cheap and the campsite hut is six hundred euros the first month but only three thereafter. We could have flown Gatwick to Faro for about £50 each! (half an hour in a taxi each side) and rented a hut, skipped the rain, saved a fortune, never slept in a garage, never been boxed in, never arrived to sleep at an aire and found it shut, never broke down, never been tearful or lost and driving in circles.

But who wants to skip life, we would have never stood in improbably silent streets, awed by the vast churches, met heroes in nowhere places, chanced on stunning bridges and empty beaches! High fived at working out the toll booths! Inspired our friends and strangers met, tested our courage and communication skills. You don't want to skip over life, that's not an education!

Love Kirsteen

End of the line for "Hope"

"Tomorrow we may have to fight again, but for now we'll ride the train to the end of the line. And then, we'll jump." To steal a line from a good film.

"Hope" the campervan has reached the end of the line.

The van will be €1000 to fix, and we don't have it, but it runs at 30 miles per hour. I'm also fed up spending money on it that would pay for a flat!! So I am going to get them to put it back together broken and drive it to the nearest camp site, about 20 minutes drive where we will use it as a static caravan!

I walked to the campsite from town today. It's nice. There is a cafe, bar, mini supermarket, tennis courts and play-park. Lots of winter discounts working out about €13 a night perhaps less. She's going to work out what we qualify for. It's all fenced off and the door office is manned so it's very safe for kids. Clearly it also has showers and loos and stuff. There are little hits to rent if you visit. Everyone come see us!

I asked the bike shop to make me an offer for renting a bike and seat for 3 months.

The campsite is 5 minutes walk from the beach and about 15 from the town centre. You go down a road a few hundred meters and the rest is all along a promenade by the sea where cars are not allowed. It's a very good place to be stranded. The town has two beaches, swimming pool, market, art gallery, shops, cafes, medical clinic, crazy golf...

You can take a boat cruise to caves with a swim and dolphins for €30.

A scooter for the day is €15. A bike with no long discount is €5 a day.

There is free wifi on the beach!!!

When March comes we will ship our stuff on a pallet for about €200 and fly or train and boat home.

We can list the van on ebay (Campervan, running, needs fuel pump, already in Portugal) I have seen such things.

Some things I like about Portugal so far:

It's cheap. First class train tickets for a trip half way down the country for us all were under €100! Really nice food is also cheap.

They bend over backwards to make kids welcome, including there mess, noise and fussy eating habits, grumpy screaming, sandy kids seem to be made just as welcome as clean cute well behaved ones!

It's beautiful, do a google image search!

It's warm.

The pace of life seems pretty relaxed, clearly if you are trying to get work done this is frustrating, but over all it's nice to be chilled and embrace the three hour lunch/siesta.

Some things I'm struggling with:

Portuguese is really hard, and frankly, unlike my husband, I'm naturally very bad at languages anyway - I do try hard.

The driving, they hardly signal at all and park everywhere, I saw a car parked on a roundabout with one wheel on the pavement! You have to make damn sure they are planning to stop at a crossing before you cross.

The smoking, you can smoke inside lots of places and bothers my daughter a lot.

Blog: Northern Spain in a tiny metal home

Blog: Northern Spain in a tiny metal home.

Very quickly the van takes on an own little world quality. I'm in a car park (not even a proper aire) on the edge of Padron in northern Spain. My husband is out in a coffee shop using the wifi to tutor, or do related business and I'm here with two sleeping children, I'm not at all afraid I was going to write but then my husband came back early and made a bang on the van getting in and I jumped out of my skin!

I should start at the beginning. We set of in a Ford transit, I have roughly converted to a campervan myself, to tour Spain and Portugal. It's been nearly three weeks. Weeks packed with emotion, somehow constantly stepping into the unpredicted creates intense emotional responses at a level above my resting-heart-rate-normal-life.

Portsmouth: we stayed one night in the carpark of a classic English pub and had a look at some ships, that's Portsmouth, it's what you do there. Everyone was wound up tight with excitement which ramped up to fever pitch in the ferry line, never has so mundane an environment, as the mini traffic jam by ropes and crates, to board the ferry, caused so much tension, what will come? what will we do? What next? Is this stupid line ever going to move?

The ferry: my kids and I loved the ferry, my husband may have too, Tim has a laid back attitude to pretty much everything, so it's hard to tell! We careered around the decks revealing in the space, wind, sea and sense of escape! We explored little cafes and shops, we spent at least 20 minutes working out that two more stealth-beds were stored/hidden in the cabin ceiling! Sadly the kids struggled to sleep well in a long rocking swell and we didn't have a good night.

Santander: we arrived in the evening rush hour and I was already tired from the 24 hour crossing, as we slipped into port admiring the stunning mountains and sunset over the coast of Spain I alone was gripped with dread. The last time I drove unfamiliar European roads was breaking down on a five lane roundabout in France! It's dark, busy and I'm exhausted. When I drove off the boat following a line of vans out of the port it was actually a relief, really doing it being less scary than thinking about it. I was plunged into city rush hour traffic, sat nav in wrong mode not directing me, pull up reset, follow, accidentally get on big motorway passed our destination, backtrack through windy roads, some traffic signs I did not understand that were omitted from all my reading about driving in Spain, search for our destination and at last parked in our aire. I realised I had been saying out loud "I've got this, I'm a good driver" dozens of times for the last hour and a half.

We all piled into the nearest cafe, shaky, sleepy and starving. The lady there started talking to us and once she understood we were just off the boat and wiped out, she rushed off to reopen the shut kitchen and get us all Spanish omelettes! The first of many kindnesses from the people here.

Liargines: lucky for us we had some experience of Spain and when we heard the coming long weekend was a "fiesta" we bought some food. Everything shuts except cafes.

The fiesta meant traffic everywhere and any camper that left the aire had no space to come back to! We stayed. There was a fair, an otter sanctity, the kids made friends and started picking up Spanish from them. Liargains was charming.

Santander: we got the train back to santandair. This meant no more driving in the city and no losing our parking at the aire. I recommend the little ferry across the bay to a beach called soto. Charming sail, surf beach one side and sheltered bay the other, little surf shops and cafes, tall dunes, bridges. Reminded me of Sorrento, on the Melbourne peninsula if that helps. I recommend both places.

A few days later I had come down from my fear-high and we all stank, time to move on to an aire with showers, on the way we stopped at a town I called "lunch stop" with a beautiful old bridge. It's amazing how quickly you get into calling places, "the place with the broken swing" or "the place Dylan spilled his ice cream" ditching the romantic Spanish names like the uncultured heathens we are.

The aire with showers was shut! No showers, no sleeping, shut, it was dark, Tim needed to hot foot it to the village to use the wifi to tutor (or we would soon run out of money) the kids were tired. I drove the van passed the cones shutting the place, and up a little ramp in a gap between a building and a car wash, and got into the shut aire to sleep! They may still be looking for us! Good luck with that mate! I was in a let us sleep here or deal with me sort of fury!

We will not bother to find out which town stupid shut aire was in, if it needs a name it can be "stupid shut aire with stupid shut showers".

Cudillero: had the beach I called heaven, really called "space" "espacia" perhaps heaven is the freedom to move and have space.

Ortigueira: this was so like my native Scotland that I kept referring to the tidal estuary as the "loch" (Scottish for lake). Green hills with misty mountains behind, grey-silver water. Little harbours sheltering mini fishing fleets, bagpipes, tartan and a Celtic festival! Many Scottish people moved there way back when. But for whatever reason they remained Catholic so the churches and very different. Decorated, garlanded, gilded and colourful, very much Spanish. Mostly churches in Scotland are tough little stone buildings with bare stone and austere decor, of stone, and did I mention stone, grey stone.

The graveyard was equally a place to jerk me back to Spain, almost every grave covered in flowers, mostly fabric and plastic. It was a sort of multi story grave yard, stone boxes five high in strange "streets of dead". Surrounded on three sides by calm water and mountains it was also one of the most peaceful places these feet have ever trod.

Everyone was very friendly, everyone said it's beautiful here but the economy is bad. True most shops were boarded up and for sale. I saw town centre, stone built, three story properties for €30,000. Despite this everywhere I went they gave us free cake, sweets, extra whatever. One man I talked with gave me his discount card for a Spanish supermarket chain! It's all he had to give with him as he was out walking his dog passed my van, but he seemed desperate for me to accept something for my story. I gave him a pencil sketch of a rearing unicorn which I tore from my sketchbook and signed. He put it away in his coat like a treasure. I hope he can visit Scotland one day as he wishes. I hope the scots treat him well.

I'm collecting points on my new Spanish supermarket loyalty card!

We got a shower in the gym there!

Ferrol: ship building town. We went swimming at the public pool, you must wear a swimming hat, but they had them to borrow, and you bring your own padlock for the lockers, which we did not have! Little differences!

Padron: the aire at Padron was far into the mountains down a windy road with a beautiful river at the end. Once we got there we realised we had little to make a meal and headed all the way back to town, at that point I put my foot down, I had become very used to driving around quiet Spanish motorways and towns, but the windy but fast mountainside roads are still hard and I was dammed if I was doing it in the dark. We found a dusty carpark and did our first non aire parking to sleep, no one gave a flying fig! We lived there three days and cooked by the van.

Padron is all little historic streets and churches. My kids learned to light real candles for prayers of people, this is now proving to be an expensive habit as they want to light six in every Chirch we go to!

Santiago de Compostela: We were going to go here on the train from Padron, and do the not having to park/drive in the city thing again, but it didn't fit well around tutoring and we were going to skip it and move on.... Then on the motorway slip road the van got stuck in second gear, I tested it and it went fine, then at the toll it stuck in fifth. I was briefly stuck in a horrid place then got it going and pulled off in what turned out to be the entry to a nature reserve, thankfully safe parking. Breakdown people called, long wait, van on truck, go to garage, can't fix an auto, massive drive to Santiago de Compostela. Posh Ford garage full of €50,000 new vans for sale. We are all a bit grotty and long haired. They stick our van round the back. Long wait. Tim has back to back lessons and has to tutor in the garage. This leaves me with two tired, hungry kids, Jasmine has been a star looking after her brother through all the turmoil but she's getting tired too. They ask me about the breakdown, gear box, auto, ok it's broken, ship it home! Epic wait for taxi to hotel. Part of it in the street in the dark as garage shut. Really nice hotel with really nice food! Few!

After many calls back and fourth I have insisted a garage be found that will find out what is wrong, is the gearbox leaking oil? Or an electrical fault? On Monday the van will be moved to a garage that can take it apart and find out. So we are stranded in a four star hotel  (paid for by my breakdown cover) in one of the most historic cities in Europe. Not all bad!

We went to the cathedral. It turns out it's not anything to do with compost, no one is growing carrots or collecting grass cuttings. Compostela may mean "star field" or "burial ground" but no compost. It's thought to be the resting place of St James, patron saint of Spain. He's a big deal, one of the 12 and son of Zebedee but again nothing to do with the magic roundabout!

The city is stone, tiny streets, steeply sloping up to the cathedral. Real pilgrims, wearing the shell symbol of the pilgrimage arrive all the time. They walk carefully, most walk 100 miles, many do more, but their faces are filled with the light of accomplishment. The cathedral is dark, very old and full of carved chapels, in the centre, gold, gold, gold. Real hope and real faith mixed with polite tourists and a little bit of freaky.

I feel very connected to so many feet on a path to feel close to their spiritual answers, then my three year old kicked off because we wouldn't pay for him to light his 55th candle and we all leave in a hurry!

I really hope we can fix the van and bid a respectful good buy to this city. I see the kids so engaged with each new place, soaking up culture and language, stretching their experience daily.

Let's hope Santiago is pilgrimage start for us.

Love, Kirsteen

List of places we slept for those dissatisfied with names like: "Stupid shut aire."

Lierganes

Colunga

Cudillero

Ortigueira

Ferrol

Padron

Santiago de Compostela